What you’ll discover trekking to ABC (Part 1)

It hasn’t been easy, Jarrod, to work out what form the blog about trekking in Nepal should take. There’s no shortage of ‘Packing Essentials For Your Trek’ blogs out there, the internet certainly doesn’t need any more of those. And believe me, you don’t want to read excerpts from my delirious, exhausted, possibly altitude affected travel diary. Honestly I flick through it and it’s like reading the accounts of two entirely different people. Words like “COMPLETE BITCH OF A DAY…. excruciating….another relentless fucking downhill stretch… disgusting monster of a being lurching along with her poles for 3 and a 1/2 hours…. ANOTHER fucking hill of goddamn stones to climb” positively jump off the page. But they’re interspersed with “just phenomenal… absolutely breathtaking… so many laughs….. gorgeous….exquisite….100% worth it…. bloody hilarious….unforgettable…. orgasm face…. (we’ll come to that last one. Well, not literally, but more about that later)

So I thought I’d present to you The Things You’ll Discover Trekking To Annapurna Base Camp.

I will have to split it over two blog entries because this trek is quite the journey of self discovery. Let’s begin Part One!

1) You are not prepared.

You might think you are, you’re not. Particularly if, like me, you are clinically an idiot, who reads the trip notes which say you’ll be trekking about 15km a day and maybe ascending 700m on any given day and think “oh, that’s a gradient of 20% or thereabouts. That’s not so bad! You could almost push a wheelchair up that!”

That’s the net total ascent. Believe it or not, your path doesn’t wind slowly and gradually around the mountain, you go up, then down to cross a river, then up, then down, then up, then down to maybe cross another river, then up… Repeat until you feel like you are about to die.

The trip notes tell you to “be prepared for stairs, lots and lots of stairs.” This is actually the understatement of 2018.

Oh, you’re from Melbourne, you say, and you’ve done the 1000 steps to get ready? Hahahaha.

You’re not prepared.

On day one, we hike for about four hours, (up, down, up, down, the briefest of plateaus) then get to a point where the guide says “ok, this next bit, there’s no more flat parts. It’s just 3500 steps up.” Tell me hotstepper, have you done the 1000 steps four times in a row, like some sort of goddamn maniac? You’re not prepared.

2) Everything “is good luck”

It was raining when you arrived at the airport? That’s good luck for the trek.

You get a golden shower from a bull who chooses the exact moment you go past him to launch a veritable fire hose of pee in your direction? That’s good luck, according to our guide! I’m almost certain you could slip, plummet over the side of the mountain and they wouldn’t miss a beat, they’d turn to the rest of the group and declare it was good luck for the rest of them.

You see quite a few of these stone offerings along your way, which again, you guessed it– are good luck. You select a stone that speaks to you in some way and choose a pile to balance it on. It’s a genuinely nerve wracking game of reverse Jenga – you don’t want to be the cursed individual who brings down a tower, I mean trousers soaked in bull pee only carry you so far in the luck stakes.

3) Walking poles are a godsend

Don’t be too proud to use an adaptive aid guys! They’ll help lever you uphill when your quads and gluts are screaming at you. They’ll relieve your poor knees and stabilise you when you’re coming treacherous downhill stretches.

But most importantly they’re a weapon you know you always have at the ready for that someone in the group who keeps telling you that you “just need to think positive” and that “your mental attitude is the key.” There are days when fantasising about ramming the tip of your pole through the throat of those people really does put a spring in your step. Rage is a powerful fuel, as it turns out.

4) Does it moisture wick? No? Then it doesn’t get the tick

Packing for trekking? You want clothes that moisture wick because you’ll be sweating from places you never knew had sweat glands. And cotton will just get clammy and stay clammy and create a whole gross, swampy feeling ecosystem for you. My tops and socks were all bamboo and merino but I made the fatal mistake of just bringing cotton underwear. I honestly want to burn it all, but it still won’t dry enough to catch a flame.

5) You will encounter some unusual traffic

2000 goats being herded down the mountain to head to Pokhara who block your path for two full minutes. (Got to love an enforced rest stop!)

Mules. Sheep. Donkeys.

At one point I we even wander into the realm of a YA fantasy novel and encounter this beauty on the side of the path. (Naturally, it’s good luck…..)

6) You will make friends fast with your trekking buddies

At home, a grown adult telling you what fabric their undies are made from and proudly declaring that “they don’t even smell” would have you backing away slowly and glancing about for their carer. (That, or thinking “why do these people always make a beeline for me on the tram??”) But when you’re trekking together for eight hours a day, and playing cards and chatting most of the night, friendships tend to evolve in fast forward, and there’s almost no such thing as oversharing.

Your trekking friends will see you at your shittiest, your dirtiest, sometimes at your sickest (and no symptom is too gross to describe to one another – Arse Pissing, anyone?). They also share with you some of the funniest, strangest and most unforgettable experiences ever, and you’re absolutely blessed if you can do that with a great group. And we have a truly great group. Not one weirdo amongst us. (Unless I was the weirdo… No… surely not…. Guys???)

7) Your natural smell

Hmmm. When you’re going without a shower for eight days and trekking roughly eight hours a day, you’ll come to discover your natural… musk. Something like that smell inside your car the morning after getting takeaway McDonald’s the night before. That, multiplied 100 fold. Gentlemen, form an orderly queue!

“You can wet wipe shower!” I hear you cry. Bahahaha. Wet wipes. Whatever. I call them ‘Kidding Yourself Cloths.’ Nobody ever finishes a long journey, or a vigorous bout of exercise and says “oh god, I’m dying for a half naked stand around where I dab at my parts with a damp tissue that smells slightly of baby powder!!” You say “I’m dying for a SHOWER because that is what you actually need. Flowing water to scrub the mankiness away.

8) You will come to appreciate the small things

The sweet victory of pushing open a toilet door to find a WESTERN TOILET in there and not a dirty squat!

Putting on the one pair of dry, clean, non trekking clothes that you have in your bag when you get to the tea house.

Peanut butter being available to put on your banana pancake in the morning. (Actually sends our group into raptures. I almost start speaking in tongues).

A really good masala tea.

An actual hot shower!

There are a few places which promise they have ‘Gas Hot Shower’ and then rather spectacularly fail to deliver this on the trek. And when it’s freezing cold, and there’s no dry surfaces to put your dry clothes so everything gets a little bit wet, and you only have a damp tiny microfibre travel towel to dry you, cold or tepid water is frankly the pits. When we finally reach a place that promises Hot Shower and ACTUAL HOT WATER comes out of the shower head, I actually moan “oh God” in an almost sexual way and if there was a camera trained on my face (there better not have been) my expression wouldn’t have been far off orgasm face. Like I said, appreciating the small things.

9) Your accomodation may be basic but location, location, location.

The rooms are pretty basic but what they lack in the way of space, electrical plugs to charge stuff, dry bedding, they make up for in terms of location. I mean really, when this is the view out of your bedroom door–you don’t have much to complain about.

Anyway, that’s just part one for you, Jarrod. See it as kind of food for thought, please reserve your final verdict for when you’ve read Part 2 next week!! Stay tuned x